298 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK I. Fir, and this Peralis Arbor, as Virgil calls it, the Pine, are abundantly 

 ^^y^^ planted in Northumberland, which are in a few years grown to the magni- 

 tude of ship.masts ; and from all that has been said, deduces these 

 encouragements : 1. The facility of their propagation ; 2. The nature 

 of their growth, which is to affect places where nothing else will thrive ; 

 3. Their uniformity and beauty; 4. Their perpetual verdure; 5. Their 

 sweetness ; 6. Their fruitfulness, affording seed, gum, fuel, and timber, 

 of all other woods the most useful and easy to work ; all Avhich highly 

 recommend it as an excellent improvement of husbandry, fit to be 

 enjoined by some solemn edict to the inhabitants of this our island, that 

 we may have masts, and those other materials, of our own growth. — 

 In planting the Silver Abies, set not the roots too deep ; it affects the 

 surface more than the rest. 



I'l.vE. 4. The Pine (of which are reckoned no less than ten several sorts, 

 preferring the domestic, or sative, for the fuller growth,) is likewise 



" mosses is not, as the wild hypothesis of some assert it to be, a mere mimicry of the 

 " natural Fir, merely an Oak or a Birch that, lying for ages in the unctuous mass, has 

 " discharged itself of all its original properties, and has adopted all the characteristic pro- 

 " perties of the Fir. Had this been the case, it could not possibly be distinguished from 

 " the Oak or the Birch, and all the trees of our mosses must have been equally and abso* 

 " lutely Firs. The Fir is the only tree of our mosses that exhibits a resinous quality. And 

 " the Fir of our mosses is as much discriminated to the eye, by the peculiar nature of its 

 " grain, as the Oak or the Birch. Nor is this all : The Fir is perpetually discovered in such 

 " of our mosses particularly, as were demonstrably prior to the settlement of the Romans 

 " amon"' us. It is discovered in such mosses as appear to the present period actually tra- 

 " versed by the roads of the Romans. It is discovered immediately adjoining to the road, 

 " and absolutely on both sides of it. Thus is the Fir found very frequent in the moss of 

 " Failsworth, close to either margin of the street, and mingled with Oaks and Birches. 

 " And as the road demonstrates the moss to have been formed before the settlement of the 

 " Romans at Manchester, so the trees discovered in the moss must have been all equally 

 " cotemporary with it, and all equally with it prior to the settlement of the Romans at 

 " Manchester. This argument carries a decisive authority with it : but we can prosecute 

 " it fairly up to demonstration : The Fir has been discovered in our mosses, not only in 

 " such parts as are immediately contiguous to the Roman roads over them, but in such as 

 are actually occupied and covered with the line of the Roman roads, and in the black 

 spongy earth immediately beneath the Roman gravel. It has been very recently dug 

 up by myself under the roots of the road over Failsworth Moss. And I have now in my 

 own possession two pieces of tried genuine Fir that were bedded with the remains of 

 " a Birch-tree one yard and a half in the mossy soil, and three yards under the crown of 

 " the Roman gravel. 



